An apparatus and method for estimating a turning characteristic of a vehicle provided with a controller that performs the following steps are provided. That is, the controller estimates a value corresponding to a standard turning state based on vehicle running data of when the vehicle is turning, estimates a transfer function between the value corresponding to the turning state and a value corresponding to an actual turning state, estimates a turning characteristic of the vehicle based on the transfer function, determines whether the vehicle is in a critical turning state, and the prohibits the estimated turning characteristic from being used when it is determined that the vehicle is in the critical turning state.